Newsome: "I'm committed to Michigan"

Submitted by TheTruth on

[bumped from the diaries -ed] Rivals:

Newsome has been the focus of widespread speculation that he's going to end up somewhere other than Michigan. After not wanting to talk about recruiting on Saturday and Sunday, he opened up a little bit on Monday. "I'm committed to Michigan," Newsome said. "Me and Bryce McNeal were going around bragging how we're going to beat Randall Carroll, who's going to USC, Cierre Wood, who's going to Notre Dame. We were bragging about things like that." Newsome said he really hit it off with McNeal. "It was great to be around a guy that's going to be a future teammate hopefully," he said. "He's a great guy. Bryce is a good, good guy. He's one of my boys now. We're going to really stay in touch."

The military academy is really going to help his progress.  Nice to hear he is firm on his committment.  It is also good news that him and BM are getting close because come Februrary those relationships really matter when it comes down to signing day where we all know anything can happen. 

[Me again. 1) Don't think we're quite out of the woods yet. 2) Sounds like Newsome smoked that camp.-ed]

Comments

The Other Brian

July 21st, 2008 at 6:50 PM ^

Bryce McNeal is officially the man. In the course of one weekend, McNeal upped his own stock, re-sold Newsome on Michigan, and spent a huge chunk of time selling Michigan to Shaq Evans.

MechE

July 21st, 2008 at 8:33 PM ^

don't think we're out of the woods yet, what do you mean?

There are still way too many rumors about him wavering to be ignored. And his statement "I am committed to Michigan" could be better. Of course he is committed to Michigan now, you have to be committed in the first place to decommit. There is also the issue that he refused to talk about it for so long. If he was completely solid on his commit, he would be a lot more upfront about it than he is being.

This is reassuring, but I agree with Brian. We aren't out of the woods yet.

MGoObes

July 21st, 2008 at 8:52 PM ^

on wtka, the newsome's said they'd be out of the media from the beginning. each time sam has talked to them they've said nothing has changed and that kevin isn't talking to any other coaches or making any other visits. he hasn't actually given a reason to think that he's not coming here. the only people that have said anything aren't kevin or his family. not to mention he said more than just "i'm committed to Michigan" he also said me and bryce have been bragging about beating notre dame, USC, etc. besides which, he lives in the heart of VT territory, if you were there and were gonna go somewhere else why would you piss of everyone around you? this is a lot more clear cut than you guys wanna make it.

MechE

July 21st, 2008 at 10:04 PM ^

on wtka, the newsome's said they'd be out of the media from the beginning. each time sam has talked to them they've said nothing has changed and that kevin isn't talking to any other coaches or making any other visits. he hasn't actually given a reason....

 Fair enough.  It's still going to be a looong wait until signing day for me though.

Blue Balls

July 21st, 2008 at 8:59 PM ^

I don't think Mr. Newsome has to reply to every report or blog that comes out saying he is not going to Michigan. To expect so much is crazy-sorry scout and rivals. The fiasco with TP has everyone on edge but Kevin is a smart young man and knows that Michigan has alot of offer. Bryce and Kevin sound like great guys as well as great players.

Noahdb

July 21st, 2008 at 9:06 PM ^

I know Robert Prunty, the head coach at Hargrave, reasonably well. Hargrave and Fork Union Military Academy rely on soft-money donations as the lifeblood of their athletics programs. Forgive me if I'm covering ground that's familiar to you guys, but those are pretty expensive prep schools. The kids who end up going there usually can't afford them. So they get financial aid packages that cover about half of their tuition. There is some work-study that's also available. The financial aid packages are almost always provided by a Hargrave or Fork Union "booster" who coincidentally is a big booster of NC State or UNC or Clemson or Miami or Penn State or whoever. Look at Ahmad Brooks as an example. He committed to UVa and then failed to qualify. He headed to Fork Union for a year. He gets a scholarship to go there and it's paid for by a UVa booster. In return, UVa knows that the Fork Union coach (John Schuman) is going to "protect" Brooks and keep VPI recruiters away from him. The first thing you do when you get to either of those schools is turn in all of your civilian gear. It gets packed up and sent home to mama. Getting in touch with someone there by phone is pretty daggone hard. It's probably not as intense as actually enrolling in the military...but it's close. Ain't no way in the world I'd ever want to go. Coach Prunty protects his guys. Even though he's friendly with the VPI staff (among many other staffs), he doesn't want his boys committing unless they are certain they know where they want to go. He hates his players jerking people around. Likewise, when one of his guys commits, he keeps the recruiters away from them. I mentioned in another thread that I used to cover recruiting. One of my first scoops involved a kid named Morris Foreman at Fork Union. He was committed to NC State. He had the grades, but was a little short on his SATs. At the time, NCSU sent their guys to Fork Union. Foreman got a qualifying score in January. He had already graduated from high school, so he didn't need to finish his extra year. He went home to Farmville, NC one weekend and never came back to school. While he was at home, one of the ECU coaches managed to get him to come five miles down the road to Greenville to a basketball game. I had a friend who spotted him at the game and told me. I managed to get his mom on the phone and she admitted he was not going to NCSU, but was going to ECU. I talked to Coach Schuman and he was furious. The next year, NC State no longer sent their kids to Fork Union...they sent them to Hargrave. Foreman ended up being a pretty good lineback for ECU and died a few years ago from a heart condition. And just for a little Wolverine content, that same NC State recruiting class involved a kid named Damon Jones. A few days after Foreman decommitted, Jones switched from NC State to Michigan. As I understand it, Jones set off a pipebomb in his dorm room and got thrown out of school at Michigan. He ended up at one of the Michigan directional schools and later played a couple of years for the Jacksonville Jaguars. This is a very long-winded and roundabout way of saying that I think you have a good shot at holding on to Newsome. If there's a dangeround time period, it will come around Christmas when he's away from school.

colin

July 22nd, 2008 at 3:26 AM ^

the natural pull is going to be toward uncertainty either way, but the pang is less intense if there was never a commit to decommit from.  The sense of one having got away is far more lasting.

Noahdb

July 22nd, 2008 at 4:01 PM ^

It's not against the rules at all. The NCAA knows about it. They've known about it since schools started doing it and there's absolutely no way they COULD do anything about it, even if they wanted to...which they don't.

Think about it -- You're a Michigan booster and you decide out of the goodness of your heart to give those hard-workin' boys down at Fork Union (or Hargrave or Milford Prep or Maine Central Institute or any of the other 500 prep schools) some financial aid. Afterall, we're at war! God bless America and salute the troops and we need good fightin' boys. So you decide to become a Fork Union (or Hargrave or Milford or any of the others...) booster as well. If that scholarship money just happens to pay for a kid whose going to Michigan, well, that's just a coincidence. It's not like you're cutting the check to the kid. You're paying for a scholarship at a prep school because you like the cut of their jib. 

The NCAA doesn't care. The kids that go to most of those schools are getting a first-rate education. The kids who go to the military schools are also getting a good shot of discipline. 

When I was in college, I was a Deadhead. There were a couple of recruiting pubs. that would pay me to do these little blurbs on high-profile players. So I'd time the scouting trips usually around spring or fall tour. I could fund a trip to Boston or New Jersey or Philly or New York or maybe somewhere in Georgia and Florida by taking two extra days and visiting about a dozen different schools and getting a photo and some interviews with these guys. This was in the early 90s, pre-WWW. 

I took a trip to Avon, CT and did a profile on three guys at Old Avon Farm. I'm from North Carolina, which has great colleges, but terrible high schools. This was my first experience with a New England prep school and it just blew me away. It was like walking around Dook's campus. They have a Web site, check it out. They had Sun workstations available for their students. Their library was nicer than my college library (I went to a sorry-ass pretend college). 

They were in the same athletic conference with schools like Choate and Hotchkiss and Taft and Deerfield. Tuition was something like $25,000 a year at the time. They actually offered full scholarships for their ringers. It wasn't hard to figure out who I was there to cover. The team came out and it was a bunch of 5-8 white guys who looked like they had just finished soccer practice. Standing among them would be five or six black guys from south Florida. The team they were playing had them as well.

They didn't have a pressbox, so they put me up in the booth with the PA announcer and the assistant coaches. One of the coaches told me that every school in the conference was allowed a certain number of players on "need" scholarships. If those players just happened to be 6-5, 300 pound left tackles from Belle Glade, FL...so be it. 

Why would the NCAA have a problem with it? Those are kids that are getting Ivy-league caliber educations.  

wolverine71

July 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 AM ^

Am I the only one who noticed the word hopefully?

 "It was great to be around a guy that's going to be a future teammate hopefully,"

That to me says he may still be waivering.